Kwentuhang Champorado ng Bayan Over a Cup of Coffee.

Japan’s Penis Festival–Try this in the Philippines Conchita!

Every year Kanamara Shrine holds this festival on the 1st Sunday in April in Kawasaki, Kanagawa. The Kanamara Matsuri is centered around a local penis-venerating shrine, once popular among prostitutes who wished to pray for protection against sexually transmitted diseases. It is said that there are divine protections also in business prosperity and the clan’s prosperity, easy delivery, marriage, and married couple harmony, etc. Today, the festival is used to raise money for HIV research. There’s also a legend of a demon that hid inside a young girl and castrated two young men on their wedding nights before a blacksmith fashioned an iron phallus that was used to break the demon’s teeth, leading to the enshrinement of the item.

Sexually transmitted diseases spurred the popularization of phallic symbols in some of Japan’s festivals dedicated to the male member, such as this one dating back to the Edo period (1603-1867). At that time, Kawasaki’s “ladies of the night” prayed not only that business would be brisk, but for protection from syphilis. Come cherry blossom time, they gathered baskets of bamboo shoots and other sprouting delicacies, carried the shrine’s phallic image in procession through the streets, and then sat down to a merry banquet on mats spread out on the courtyard of Kanamara Shrine.

With the spread of syphilis now curbed, participants in the modern festival solicit donations for HIV/AIDS research. Today, the highlights of this saucy festival include transvestites parading through the town’s streets carrying a mikoshi (portable shrine) with a humungous pink phallus on top. And, if that’s not guaranteed to make you blush as deeply as the surrounding cherry blossoms, then the spectacle of grandmas and grandpas sucking on carnal candy and sweetmeat replicas of this stupendous phallus, is more than likely to.

Other attractions include locals carving penises out of daikon (radish), children and young women sitting astride penis-shaped seesaws for good luck and fertility blessings, as well as a seated banquet in the compound of Kanamara Jinja (aka Wakamiya Hachiman-gu shrine) where the phallic radishes are auctioned. All are welcome to take part in the festival’s parade and banquet, which includes dancing and karaoke singing. Many revelers, Japanese and foreigners alike, turn out in kimono, Edo period attire or drag for this two-day event of phallic fun which is also attended by many of the area’s community leaders and civic dignitaries.

Hirohiko Nakamura, the chief priest at his family shrine says, “Whether your prayers be for prosperity, healthy offspring, a fertile marriage, wedded bliss, an uncomplicated delivery or personal health, this shrine remains the focus of community faith, as it has been for centuries. “Shinto is traditionally non-judgmental in the matter of individual sexual behavior, and my family’s shrine has long served as a place of help and a refuge to those suffering from sexually transmitted diseases. What could be more natural, then, that the shrine would embrace those who are concerned with the spread of HIV and AIDS,” says Nakamura.

Religion and sex have a long history of comfortable coexistence in Japan. This is clearly implied even in the national creation myths in which the kami, or central male and female deities – Izanagi no Mikoto and Izanami no Mikoto – are said to have stirred the primordial muck with a “heavenly jeweled spear” before creating the island of Onogoro. The couple then descended from the heavens and married, with Izanami giving birth to Japan’s islands as well as its many gods.

And, according to such ancient chronicles as the Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters) that relates the national mythology, the goddess Amenouzume no Mikoto flashed her sexual organs at the other kami, or divinities, in their cosmic abode. Curious about the resulting commotion, the Sun Goddess, Amaterasu (who had plunged the world into darkness by cloistering herself in a cave), peered out from her hiding place, caught her reflection in a mirror, and was abducted from her refuge, an act that restored light to the world.

In Japan, sex and sexual relations are not viewed as moral issues as they often are in the Western countries and in the United States in particular. Japanese have traditionally viewed sexual relations as a natural phenomenon, “like eating, to be enjoyed in its proper place”, prostitution is widely accepted as a natural component and even a necessity in society. This “acceptance” of prostitution in Japanese society can be observed in their very relaxed laws against sex with children and prostitution, which says that it is legal in Tokyo for men to have sex with children as young as the age of twelve. Similarly, under an Antiprostitution Law in Japan, prostitution is deemed illegal, but in effect it is permitted to exist so long as authorities can control it . These principles together with the existing consumer driven-society, in which the type of brand-name items people possess is an indication of their social status and wealth, a distancing gap between the young and older generation, and a present national obsession with schoolgirls as sexual objects.

The increase in teen prostitution is largely due to the generation gap that exits and is widening between the young and older generation of Japan. In a rapidly growing economy as in Japan, parents are working harder and longer to earn money. That leaves children to care for themselves, yielding them the growing freedom to live as they see fit. The growing independence and self-reliance developed causes the young people to become more distanced from their parents and other adults. They possess different societal and materialistic views from their parents and elders, developing an entire unique culture of values and beliefs from the traditions of thoughts taught to them. These young people have also been termed the “Generation X” in Japan. One particular differing view between the younger generation and their parents is in the matter of making money. While their parents believe in working long and hard and laboring sufficiently to make money, young people prefer to make money while having fun . “Having fun” in many young women’s cases means seeking out older men who want young escorts and will pay to take them out for the evening.